------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
World News Highlights
Is Depleted Uranium Killing More Than Just Enemy Tanks?
UN finds Kosovo nuclear danger
Anger at plan to dump bags of depleted uranium
Traces of Uranium Isotope Found in U.S. Munitions
UN Staff Warned to Steer Clear of Depleted Uranium
No 'Causal Link' In Uranium Inquiry
World News Highlights
German radioactive spa says 'Hail, Radonia!'
World News Highlights(2)
Bush holds key to future of Korea talks
Washington Daybook
LANL Kicks Off Nuke-Waste Transmutation
Lawsuits Claim Radiation Effects
Powell Cautious With Peacekeepers
Powell's Complex Record

MILITARY
Today's teens avoid a 'Traffic' jam
States
Latest challenge from Iraq
C.I.A. Chief Is Asked to Stay On and Agrees
Today In History
Today In History (2)

OTHER
Whitman has skills but lacks knowledge
States
FDA issues rules for new biotech foods
Colorado
Berenson case goes to Peru Superior Court

ACTIVISTS
Mainstream Majority in Mourning for Democracy
Activists Of Every Stripe
For the Record
End To U.N. Sanctions Sought
World News Highlights


-------- NUCLEAR

World News Highlights

Excite News
January 17, 2001
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010117/14/world-highlights

MOSCOW - French Defence Minister Alain Richard said Paris and Moscow were committed to a major 1972 disarmament treaty and urged Washington to clarify its proposals for a missile defence system.

Richard, speaking after a two-day visit to Moscow, said he also wanted to discuss Russian calls for a similar system to guard Europe and praised all countries with peacekeepers in the Balkans for backing research into the effects of depleted uranium arms.


---- depleted uranium

Is Depleted Uranium Killing More Than Just Enemy Tanks?
Despite a slew of studies saying that it is safe, a storm grows in NATO over the use of tank-busting ammunition using nuclear waste

Time
Wednesday, January 17, 2001
BY TONY KARON
mailto:tkaron@pathfinder.com
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0%2C8599%2C94390%2C00.html

What's killing the peacekeepers of Europe? That question may be about to plunge NATO into a round of bitter recriminations over ammunition used in the Kosovo war - a conflict that could further strain relations between Europe and the U.S. in a Western alliance whose members are pulling in opposite directions on a number of fronts. NATO and European Union officials are meeting Tuesday to discuss the mounting controversy over the alliance's extensive use of depleted-uranium shells in Kosovo.

The death from various cancers of at least 17 soldiers (15 of them from leukemia) from European armies since being deployed on peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Kosovo has raised an outcry in Europe, and some of their governments believe the cause of their illnesses may lie in the ammunition used by NATO against Serbian armor and artillery positions in both regions. Not so, say the U.S., Britain and NATO headquarters, citing extensive scientific research by the World Health Organization, among others, to support their assertion that there's no link between depleted-uranium ammunition and the illnesses that killed the European peacekeepers. Still, the U.S. issued a warning on the dangers of depleted-uranium debris to all NATO armies joining the peacekeeping mission in 1999.

A nuclear-industry by-product

Depleted uranium is attractive to armorers because of its high ratio of mass to bulk, which gives it the ability to pierce heavy armor. The by-product of the fuel-enrichment process used by nuclear power stations, it contains fairly low doses of radiation, but is acknowledged to carry some risk of cancer and other ailments if directly ingested, inhaled or absorbed through cuts. That knowledge, and the circumstantial link between high rates of illness and service in territories where NATO has fired large amounts of depleted-uranium ordnance, is enough to have European NATO members demanding further discussion over the alliance's favorite tank-busting ammunition. And the acknowledged risks attached to direct contact with depleted-uranium particles has also prompted the WHO to warn that children playing in former conflict zones could be at high risk. But a United Nations Environmental Program study of Kosovo anticipated shortly is expected to find that radiation from depleted-uranium shells is present in non-threatening quantities.

NATO officials believe that Europeans are simply revisiting the "Gulf War Syndrome" controversy that played out in Britain and the U.S. over the past decade, and the alliance's military leadership believes there's no scientific link. Radiation levels from depleted uranium are 40 percent lower than those found in the natural form of the metal, which occurs commonly in the environment, NATO officials argue. U.S. officials point out that the Department of Defense has been monitoring 33 American soldiers whose bodies contain fragments of depleted-uranium shells as a result of "friendly fire" incidents during the Gulf War, and none of them have developed renal difficulties or cancer.

A tricky NATO situation

Still, the circumstantial link will spur demands for further scientific inquiries. And the matter becomes more complicated for NATO by the fact that the country spearheading the demand for answers - Italy, which has lost six of its soldiers - also happens to be the one providing the bulk of the troops serving in the Kosovo peacekeeping mission. In addition, the tricky discussion won't be helped by the fact that the discussion comes at a time when the incoming administration of NATO's acknowledged leader, the United States, has signaled that it wants to get its own troops out of the Balkans as soon as possible. And the circumstantial link alone between Balkan service and leukemia may be enough to ensure that, like the metal itself, the controversy over depleted uranium will be around for a long time to come.

---

UN finds Kosovo nuclear danger
US ammunition may have been made with 'dirty' depleted uranium

The Guardian
Wednesday January 17, 2001
Peter Capella in Geneva and Paul Brown and Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uranium/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uranium/story/0,7369,423418,00.html

Fragments of depleted uranium ammunition found in Kosovo were made with reprocessed fuel from nuclear reactors, the United Nations confirmed yesterday, raising new fears about the risks of contamination.

Officials of the UN environment programme said tests on material gathered by its team of experts in Kosovo had revealed traces of uranium 236 - an isotope found only in spent nuclear fuel - among weapons delivered by Nato aircraft in the 1999 conflict.

The discovery came as the latest senior figure to enter the debate, the commander of British forces in the Gulf war, Sir Peter de la Billiere, called last night for a full public inquiry into claims that exposure to depleted uranium weapons had caused serious illnesses among British troops. He also suggested compensation for afflicted service personnel.

The latest DU discovery, which follows the investigation of eight of the 112 sites in Kosovo by a team of UN scientists last November, is likely to prompt questions about what other dangerous radioactive materials may have been contained in the US shells.

Futher analysis is being carried out in five European laboratories to determine radioactivity levels. The World Health Organisation and other international bodies have also been asked to give their as sessment of the implications of the finding.

There are two types of depleted uranium, known as "clean and dirty". Until now it has been assumed that the material used in US shells was of the clean variety which is obtained as a side-product of the extraction of uranium 235 from ore to make nuclear fuel or nuclear weapons.

By contrast "dirty" DU is what is left over when the fuel has been through a nuclear reaction. It is known as "dirty" because it may be contaminated with traces of far more dangerous isotopes such as plutonium and other highly radioactive particles.

"This is the first time that the spent fuel origins of DU munitions have emerged," David Kyd, a spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is taking part in the UN's investigation, said last night.

The UN environment programme said in a statement last night that the amount of uranium 236 had been so small that it had minimal extra radioactive toxicity.

However, it said a final assessment would only be made once testing on spent ammunition, soil, water and milk samples collected in Kosovo is completed next month.

When British Nuclear Fuels supplied shells to the MoD for use in the Gulf war, it used clean DU. But in 1993, according to documents seen by the Guardian, 120,000kg of DU were imported from the US for use in munitions.

None of this was used by British forces in Kosovo although tanks with this ammunition on board were ready for deployment. Last night it was not known whether the DU imported into Britain was clean or dirty.

The likely explanation of how dirty DU came to be used in Kosovo is one of cost and ease of access by the US military. In the privatised world of US nuclear utilities the clean DU would belong to private companies.

In the possession of the government would be stockpiles of dirty DU left over from the cold war when the US military reprocessed thousands of tonnes of spent nuclear fuel to extract the pltonium. For every tonne of plutonium gained, 100 tonnes of dirty DU would have to be stored.

In the 1980s and 1990s all four big nuclear powers - Russia, US, UK and France - began converting stockpiles of otherwise useless DU into armour piercing weapons. It was not until last night that anyone outside military circles realised that some of it was dirty DU.

Meanwhile, it emerged that General Sir Peter de la Billiere confirmed he was not warned that DU weapons could pose a radiation danger.

Sir Peter's intervention will be welcomed by Gulf war vet erans convinced the shells have led to serious illnesses.

Asked by the BBC News if he supported calls for a full public inquiry into DU weapons, Sir Peter replied: "Of course, for two reasons. If indeed there is a proven link to illnesses (veterans have) got to be looked after and receive proper compensation."

Secondly, he said, it was critically important to establish whether there was a link because if there was not, the military would want to go on us ing the weapons.

Asked if he was warned about DU weapons - fired by British tanks as well as American armour and aircraft during the Gulf war - Sir Peter said: "I was not aware there were any specific dangers to it."

He added that British commanders wanted to make sure they had the "best equipment on the market".

---

Anger at plan to dump bags of depleted uranium

The Guardian
Wednesday January 17, 2001
Special report: depleted uranium
Mary O'Hara
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uranium/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uranium/story/0,7369,423283,00.html

People living near a rubbish tip used for low level nuclear waste claimed yesterday they had been duped by plans to dump depleted uranium on the site.

As the local MP voiced concern about the British Nuclear Fuelsplan, the environment agency said last night it was investigating the issue.

The Guardian revealed yesterday that the Springfields BNFL plant at Freckleton, Lancashire, is to dump 30,000 bags of nuclear waste containing depleted uranium at a site three miles from Preston in the river Ribble.

A BNFL employee said in a letter that the bags would be the only form of containment used and would be closed "using just a couple of strips of adhesive tape".

The postmaster and a local councillor, Kiran Mulholland, said: "It just beggars belief... it will destroy any confidence local people had left in BNFL.

"I will be asking some very serious questions of the environment agency to make sure that licences are being complied with."

Philip Woodward, director of environmental services at Flyde council, said: "We need to establish if waste which should be stored elsewhere is being dumped here. We need some answers."

A shop owner, Linda Law, who has lived in Freckleton for 25 years and has three children, said she was scared by the prospect of radioactive materials being disposed of so close by. "People in this village have always been concerned about the dump but if this is what's happening, we need to be told. Our children are here and we have to think of our grandchildren too.

"People have lost any trust they had. We've never really been told the whole truth about what is being dumped and this is worrying indeed".

Anne Smith, who sits on Flyde's environmental liaison committee, said: "The people of Freckleton have been concerned for some time.

"I'd like to think BNFL had no intention to be secretive but this destroys confidence. We want to protect this community."

With residents expressing alarm, David Borrow, MP for South Ribble, said last night that many people in the area were worried by the prospect of radiation pollution of the nearby river.

The site, managed by Lancashire Waste Services, is used primarily for household and industrial waste - although for a number of years BNFL's Springfields plant, near Preston, has been using it for low-level nuclear waste. This type of waste used to be taken to the BNFL dump at Drigg in Cumbria which is filling up earlier than expected.

Lancashire Waste Services said in a statement yesterday: "To date the company has not been informed of any problems with this type of waste but we will continue to monitor the situation."

The company said it had been accepting low level radioactive waste from BNFL for many years under a special licence from the environment agency. The company said disposal of the materials have complied with agency regulations and passed spot checks for radioactivity.

The environment agency said: "We are looking into the allegations made in the letter received by the Guardian. But these are complex issues and will take time." So far no irregularities have been found.

A spokesman for Lancashire Waste Services said deliveries from BNFL were labelled and disposed of immediately according to regulations but added: "We do not carry out inspections of the contents on site. That is an issue for the environment agency and companies involved."

The land currently used for waste disposal at the site will be converted for agricultural use when the company's licence runs out in a year.

--------

Traces of Uranium Isotope Found in U.S. Munitions in Kosovo

January 17, 2001
By MARLISE SIMONS
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/17/world/17URAN.html

PARIS, Jan. 16 - A Swiss laboratory announced today that it had found traces of a uranium isotope that suggest radioactive contamination in American-made munitions that were collected on the battlefields of Kosovo.

The lab, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Spiez, said that the quantities found of uranium 236 were minute and that it was checking for other substances in the spent bullets. They were retrieved by a United Nations mission that was checking the effects of depleted uranium weapons.

Four other European labs are analyzing samples from Kosovo. Their joint findings of toxic materials found in soil, water and spent shells are to be published in March. It is not clear why the Swiss lab announced part of its results today.

The lab acted as a furor in Europe over sicknesses among NATO troops who are returning from Kosovo is shifting focus. Scientists and nuclear experts in Europe have said there are indications that some depleted uranium used in antitank rounds was "dirty," or contaminated.

The Swiss finding of uranium 236 is certain to increase anxiety in the debate over why 15 European troops recently died of leukemia and others have unexplained illnesses.

The announcement coincides with the publication of a book in France next week, "Depleted Uranium, Invisible War," that has researched the contamination of the depleted uranium and its consequences and is causing a stir in Paris.

NATO has tried to calm the uproar, saying depleted uranium munitions cannot cause serious health problems after impact. NATO quickly created a medical committee that repeated today that there was no recognizable "Balkans Syndrome."

Scientists and nuclear experts in Europe and the United States are at odds over the dangers.They also disagree on whether the presence of uranium 236 makes a crucial difference, even though it suggests that other contaminants may be present.

Everyone seems to agree that uranium 236 does not occur in natural uranium ore, nor is it meant to be found in depleted uranium, which is was stripped of the elements suitable for use in reactors and bombs.

"U 236 is created in a nuclear reactor," said a French nuclear physicist, Monique Sené. "It comes from nuclear fuel and, most likely, from recycling nuclear waste. There is no other known source."

An American physicist, Dr. Steve Fetter, said the presence of uranium 236 in munitions with depleted uranium was known but said it would not cause a health problem, because its alpha radiation does not allow it to wreak much damage. He said the uranium did not penetrate into the bone and marrow, where leukemia originates.

But Jean-François Lacronique, director of the National Radiation Protection Agency in France, a watchdog agency, said in an interview the finding of uranium 236 was a cause for concern because "it is 10 times more radioactive than depleted uranium, and it acts very quickly." When uranium-tipped munitions explode in a flame, Mr. Lacronique said, the high temperatures can turn uranium into tiny droplets or dust particles that can enter the body, where they can remain radioactive for 200 days.

He also said a report published in The European Journal of Nuclear Medicine stated that uranium 236 had been found in the urine and bone tissue of some Persian Gulf war veterans.

The presence of uranium 236 changes the scope of the health problems, Mr. Lacronique said. "To get cancer from depleted uranium, you have to be exposed for a long time to very large amounts. But U 236 changes the equation, because it comes from burnt nuclear fuel that was recycled. We now have the duty to find out if other contaminants from burnt fuel are present like plutonium or americium, which are much more harmful."

----

UN Staff Warned to Steer Clear of Depleted Uranium

January 17, 2001
By REUTERS Filed at 5:12 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-health-.html

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. staff worldwide were warned on Tuesday to steer clear of the shards of weapons that may have been made with depleted uranium, blamed by some peacekeeping soldiers in Kosovo for cases of leukemia.

The U.N. Office of Human Resources Management, in a letter to all personnel who served or were now serving in a region where depleted uranium weapons were used, said there was little evidence at present to suggest a link between the material and leukemia, a potentially fatal blood cancer.

It pledged to continue monitoring the situation and quickly issue relevant medical advice as it became available and urged staff to get a check-up from the U.N. medical services if they felt they needed one.

The weapons were used by a U.S.-led coalition in Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War and by NATO in the Balkans in the 1990s. Depleted uranium is used in the tips of missiles, shells and bullets to increase their ability to penetrate armor, but on impact it can break down into radioactive dust.

The United Nations earlier this month said it found evidence of radioactivity at eight of 11 sites tested in Kosovo after they were struck by NATO ammunition with depleted uranium during 1999 bombings. More tests of soil, water and vegetation samples are under way, with results expected in March.

But NATO insists the bombings pose no risk of a dread ''Balkans syndrome,'' saying the depleted uranium used in the armaments gives off less than natural background levels of radioactivity.

The World Health Organization expects to issue its own conclusions in late February after reviewing the available scientific evidence on the health effects of depleted uranium.

Russia, which has seized on the controversy to berate NATO for alleged dirty tactics, charged on Wednesday that the environmental impact of NATO's 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia equaled that of the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986.

--------

No 'Causal Link' In Uranium Inquiry

Wednesday, January 17, 2001
International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/7765.htm

BRUSSELS An initial study of health records showed no connection between depleted uranium munitions and cancer among soldiers who served in the Balkans, NATO said Tuesday.

Based on data submitted by NATO members, experts did not find any increase in disease or mortality in Balkans veterans compared with other soldiers, said Major General Roger van Hoof of Belgium, head of NATO's Committee of the Chiefs of Military Medical Services.

"On the evidence available, a causal link cannot be identified between depleted uranium and the complaints or pathologies" of the Balkans veterans, General Van Hoof said.

Nonetheless, he said, a "timely investigation" was necessary to allay public fears.

--------

World News Highlights

January 17, 2001
Reuters
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010117/14/world-highlights

STRASBOURG, France - The European Parliament approved calls to suspend the use of depleted uranium in munitions because of fears that it has caused cancer among soldiers serving in the Balkans.

A motion calling for a moratorium and an independent study into the potential health risks of such arms was supported by 394 of the Strasbourg-based parliament's 626 deputies.

-------- germany

German radioactive spa says 'Hail, Radonia!'

January 17, 2001
Story by Adam Tanner
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=9541&newsdate=17-Jan-2001

SCHLEMA, Germany - As NATO's Balkans veterans fret about health risks from uranium munitions, a generation old enough to remember the last great European war is happily paying for a bit of extra radiation exposure.

Every day hundreds of elderly Germans splash around in the spa waters at Schlema, which contain low levels of radon, a radioactive gas generated from the decay of uranium, with the conviction it can cure a variety of ailments like rheumatism.

"I'm here for the first time and it's rather nice," said Gerda Wolf, a 67-uear-old retired farmer, after a swim in a large pool overlooked by hills famous for their rich lode of uranium. "I'm not afraid of radiation...I plan to come again next week."

As in the current debate over the risks faced by NATO soldiers because of the use of depleted uranium munitions in Kosovo and Bosnia or early in the Gulf War against Iraq, experts disagree over the possible dangers from radioactive spas such as Schlema and Bad Gastein in Austria.

German Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping, who said this month that soldiers were not at risk from contact with depleted uranium shells, raised some eyebrows by comparing their exposure to the radioactive spas.

"For example, one gram of depleted uranium that was used for this type of ammunition is about the same amount of radiation as in 10 litres of water from the Bad Gastein spa," he told reporters.

AN IRRADIATED PAST

Germany's handful of radioactive spas have a tradition dating back a century. And even during this post-Chernobyl age, more sensitive to radioactivity, local officials are betting that the town's future revives that radioactive spa past.

Schlema, with a population of about 6,000, enjoyed its heyday during the Nazi era when it boasted of being the most radioactive spot on Earth and had more than 100 hotels and guesthouses to receive visitors. It thrived even during World War Two, receiving its record number of spa visitors in 1943.

After the war, the victorious Soviet occupiers realised the uranium in this region, about 230 km (150 miles) south of Berlin, was too valuable for just splashing around in.

They sent in an NKVD secret police general who once ran gulag labour camp to set up a giant mining operation for Soviet nuclear warheads. The spa was destroyed, visitors barred.

The mining continued until the collapse of East German communism in 1990, when the reunified Germany inherited an ecological disaster, even though much of the uranium was by then already extracted.

"The strongest radioactive source in the world was right here," said Peter Wolff, 58, head of the ongoing local clean-up operation, which is expected to cost 13 billion marks ($6.3 billion) across the region.

He led a visitor to an elevator shaft and descended into the maze of dimly-lit mining tunnels where he has worked since 1960.

"No one needed to be forced to mine here. Miners earned lots of money back then, twice as much as in other jobs," he said. "It was known that uranium was radioactive, you learned that in school. But it's like flying. There are accidents, but you think it won't happen to you."

The danger was always there however.

Experts say more than 5,000 miners died from radon-related lung cancer which developed while mining uranium for the Soviet Union after the war.

SPA AS NEW BEGINNING

Yet few dwell on these past dangers, least of all those running the town's 43-million mark ($20.7 million) spa facility that opened two years ago. In front, Radonia, a statuary tribute to radon personified as a water nymph, stands naked inside a fountain, drinking from a jug of irradiated water.

"Two thousand patients die from aspirin a year," said spa director Steffen Matthias. "There is not one known case of a patient dying from radon."

"It's more dangerous to take three flights a year to London or New York," he added, noting the additional solar radiation exposure people receive while flying at high altitude.

Spa marketing director Evelyn Weiss says the radon treatments not only cure ailments, they revive visitors' sex lives. As is normal in Germany, male and female guests share a naked sauna.

At the government's Radiation Protection Agency, officials say the radon spa is fine for those suffering health problems.

"One does get a bigger exposure to radiation here, but one cannot say it is a bigger risk," said official Winfried Meyer. "Patients who receive the spa cure have less pain, so they need less medicine. The savings in medicine, which itself can pose risks, is worth the small exposure."

Germany is not alone in promoting radioactive spas, which still operate in Austria, the former Soviet Union, Japan and elsewhere. But some experts say the healing powers of radioactive radon are dubious and risky.

"Other aspects of the 'spa experience' may be beneficial overall. But the irradiation of internal organs by radon and its decay products or exposure to radon, per se, is unlikely to be helpful," said Otto Raabe, professor emeritus of radiation biophysics at the University of California at Davis.

William Field of the University of Iowa's College of Public Health points out that patients suffering from arthritis may feel better after any regular hot water bath. Yet he says there are health risks from radon.

"Numerous epidemiological studies of radon-exposed underground miners and the recent residential epidemiolgic study we performed in the United States indicate that radon gas exposure causes lung cancer," he said.

"The radon spas should not serve as a substitute for conventional health care," he continued. "While it is possible that the radon gas exposure does cause some beneficial health effect, owners of the spas should inform the spas' users that there might also be some risk involved."

RADONIA AEROBICS

In Schlema, nearly everyone discounts such risks and cites a 1992 study that said radon was more effective than hot water.

"On weekends we have little babies swimming here," said marketing director Weiss. "We couldn't do it if it were dangerous."

Just in case, however, workers in the area of especially concentrated radon baths wear a dosimeter on their smocks to measure radioactivity.

At the spa's main swimming pool, a disco version of the Beatles "All my Loving" started playing as a geriatric water aerobics class got under way. Grey hair and candy-coloured bathing caps bobbed up and down.

Off to the side rested Gerd Richter, 66, who once mined uranium in the nearby hills. Now he is turning to Radonia again, hoping she can cure his aching joints from decades of tough work in the mines.

"I've noticed that it does help," he said, adding that he now comes twice a month.

Spa director Matthias said the baths are also the only hope for the region's economic woes such as high unemployment.

"Economically the whole region has suffered the shutdown of many firms since reunification," he said. "This is the only future for the city...It would be very sad here without spa tourism."

-------- india / pakistan

World News Highlights

January 17, 2001
Excite News
Reuters
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010117/14/world-highlights

NEW DELHI - India successfully test-fired a longer-range version of its intermediate-range Agni ballistic missile from its eastern coast, the defence ministry said.

It was the second test of the upgraded version of the original Agni, a two-stage all-solid motor missile with a 2,000 km (1,250 miles) range, which a defence analyst said indicated substantial progress in the indigenous missile development project.

-------- korea

Bush holds key to future of Korea talks

Wednesday, January 17, 2001
By F.J. Khergamvala
The Hindu
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2001/01/17/stories/03170002.htm

TOKYO, JAN. 16. Without being certain that a successor administration and a new Congress will uphold commitments made to North Korea, it may have been a wise decision for the outgoing U.S. President not to have gone to the North.

The question now is, can the two Koreas retain the momentum generated since their summit in June 2000.

Mr. George W. Bush's coming into the White House has added to the already existing imponderables which in turn now loom larger as possible obstacles to the continuing thaw on the peninsula.

Two of the largest deals that added content to the rather successful sunshine policy of South Korea's Mr. Kim Dae Jung are now being reviewed. One review can be a ``peace-breaker.''

The North's leader, Mr. Kim Jong Il is reported to be in China since Monday evening.

Even though no formal announcement of confirmation or denial has been made, it would not be surprising if Mr. Kim Jong Il has gone to talk to Beijing, whose leaders share a common concern revolving round missile defence issues being debated in post- Clinton Washington DC.

The missile defence issue is quite complex and does not directly threaten the peace on the Korean peninsula.

That peace is essentially driven by the material gains accruing to Pyongyang from a variety of contracts and two major deals.

Chronologically, the U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework of 1994 provided the basis for a continued U.S.-North dialogue, followed by the Hyundai-North Korea $942 million investments deal on creating infrastructure in the North.

Mr. Kim Jong Il is scheduled to make a reciprocal visit to the South this spring for the second inter-Korean summit.

The two leaders last met in the middle of June 2000. What evolves from this second summit will greatly influence the direction and pace of events.

The results of the summit will be substantially a consequence of how the two big deals are upheld or modified.

Mr. Kim Dae Jung's sunshine policy has always been under attack from within the country by conservatives, but a recovering economy and support from the U.S. as well as the business deals have given him the upper hand. Now, the equations are shifting.

Reuters reported from Seoul on Monday night that the Hyundai Group, which did a $942 million contract in 1998 now wants to extend fee payments to the North to beyond the 2005 deadline.

Identifying its source as the spokesman of the Hyundai company that handles the entire group's operations in the North, the news agency said its own corporate difficulties had prompted re- opening the subject.

Hyundai is also seeking to create a huge industrial park in the North at Kaesong.

This review gives ammunition to Mr. Kim Dae Jung's rivals who have been saying the South's economy does not permit largesse in the form of food aid, the North's principal demand for most State-to-State bargains.

In a mirror development across the Pacific, a new Congress might look even more cynically at that clause in the 1994 Agreed Framework (nuclear swap deal) that requires the U.S. to pay for heavy oil until the new reactors, which are at the heart of the Agreed Framework, are ready.

The Clinton administration's inability to smoothly get the appropriations through Congress has been a constant source of potential trouble, from which Japan and the Saudis have often bailed the U.S. out.

Worse could follow. The 1994 deal schedules the first of the two 1,000 megawatt light water reactors to be done by 2003. The second by the following year.

The nearly $4.6 billion project has not gone beyond ground breaking stage, thus causing at least four to five years' delay.

The North has signalled its disgust by seeking free of charge from the South, two million kilowatts of energy, the same as the new reactors' capacity.

Pyongyang was made to forego its nuclear programme to put its spent plutonium in accountable fuel rods. Today, Mr. Kim Dae Jung still drives the reconciliation process. If Mr. Bush gets into the seat and insists on switching from nuclear to coal, the North could either project this worldwide as a deal breaker and rightly so, or demand an unacceptably high compensation.

-------- u.s. nuc facilities

Washington Daybook,
January 17, 20001
http://search1.washtimes.com/cgi-bin/MsmGo.exe?site_id=1&page_id=269

FEDERAL AGENCIES

8:30 a.m. - Nuclear Regulatory Commission holds a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste. Location: Room T-2B3, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville. Contact: 301/415-6805.

NATO discussion - 11 a.m. -The Woodrow Wilson Center presents a panel discussion titled "NATO Membership Action Plan: A Journey to Where?" Location: Woodrow Wilson Center, Ronald Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Contact: 202/691-4016 or 202/691-4100.

-------- new mexico

LANL Kicks Off Nuke-Waste Transmutation

Wednesday, January 17, 2001
Albuquerque Journal
By Jennifer McKee
http://www.abqjournal.com/scitech/226890news01-17-01.htm

It sounds like a simple, almost ingenious idea: Take the nation's 30,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel. Bombard it with neutrons to eat up the nastiest stuff in the garbage heap. In the end, you're left with a small amount of highly radioactive, although short-lived, waste and a big pile of low-level radioactive garbage that can be safely buried in many landfills.

It's called the "transmutation of nuclear waste," literally transforming radioactive nuclear materials into other, less problematic forms. Supporters, like Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., say it just might take care of one the nation's most pressing nuclear problems: What to do with the radioactive leftovers of nuclear power. Critics call the idea a "shell game" of nuclear waste and say it costs more and generates more new waste than it's worth.

Domenici secured $34 million to fund a new program at Los Alamos National Laboratory to see if the technology will work. The lab officially christened the program last week, naming Edward Arthur the new director of the experimental program now called Advanced Accelerator Applications, or AAA.

He was in Albuquerque on Tuesday to announce the program.

"I have come to the conclusion that the United States has to get itself involved in new technologies surrounding nuclear power," he said in an interview with the Journal. "In order for the world to grow and have clean air, we don't have many alternatives."

Nuclear power plants, unlike their coal-burning cousins, don't really "burn" anything. Instead, they generate energy by creating controlled nuclear chain reactions - the same process that powers nuclear bombs but much tamer. The process changes the reactor fuel into a soup of other radioactive elements, including plutonium.

Other countries, especially France, take that glob of spent mix-matched nuclear fuel, reprocess it and use it over again, said Pete Lyons, Domenici's science adviser. The United States, however, plans on burying it.

But that solution has problems. For one, Lyons said, no one particularly wants the waste in their back yard. And for another, the waste contains plutonium, which has a half-life of 24,000 years, which under government guidelines means the waste must be buried in repositories "guaranteed" for at least 10,000 years.

"Talking about what's going to happen in the next 10,000 years is more theology than science," he said.

The AAA technology, if successful, would use up all the waste's plutonium, leaving material with a half-life of only 300 years.

Lab scientists propose to build a special particle accelerator that would hurl neutrons at the waste. Ideally, the plutonium would absorb these neutrons, which would make it less radioactive. The process should also generate electricity, some of which would power the accelerator, but the extra could be sold on the open market.

Lyons cautioned that the program is an experiment. The process may prove too costly or too environmentally questionable to work in the real world.

Still, both he and the senator said they believe the technology holds too much promise to be ignored.

"We've got to find a much better solution to the permanent disposal of nuclear waste," Domenici said.

Some scientists and activists, however, think AAA is not an answer.

"It smacks of pork barrel politics between Domenici and the lab," said Jay Coghlan, of Nuclear Watch of New Mexico, a Santa Fe-based group.

The United States needs to learn from the mistakes of nuclear power, said Greg Mello, of the Los Alamos Study Group, another Santa Fe group, not chase "fantasy" technologies.

"There is no technical solution that will take away the responsibility for nuclear weapons," he said.

What's more, said Hisham Zerrissi, a consulting senior scientist for the Institute of Energy and Environmental Research, the technology doesn't actually "reduce" nuclear waste at all.

He doesn't argue the point that plutonium will "fission off" if saturated in neutrons. But you're still left with a bunch of radioactive uranium, he said.

Under current law, only "transuranic" waste is considered "high-level," which means only elements heavier than uranium such as plutonium must be buried in special, highly controlled repositories. Uranium, no matter how radioactive it is, is considered "low-level."

"It's a loophole," Zerrissi said. And under that loophole, the uranium left over from AAA technology can be buried in less secure landfills, even though it's as radioactive as some of the material buried at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, the repository for defense-generated nuclear waste in Carlsbad.

"This is going to create more dangers than it's proposed to solve," he said. "There's not a clear, clear argument for transmutation."

-------- new york

Lawsuits Claim Radiation Effects

January 17, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Oak-Ridge-Lawsuits.html

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Two class-action lawsuits were filed Wednesday against more than a dozen contractors who have operated the Oak Ridge, Tenn., nuclear weapons complex since World War II.

Lawyer George Barrett said one suit deals with the ``health hazards that were created and have never been properly addressed.'' The other asks redress for ``the deliberate creation of a racially segregated community which has been preserved up to this time in violation of the Constitution and the laws of Tennessee.''

The suits, filed in U.S. District Court in Knoxville, seek unspecified damages, medical monitoring, and a public apology.

The plaintiffs include former employees, residents and their children.

A health study released a year ago suggested that some Oak Ridge residents may have suffered thyroid cancer or brain damage because of toxic releases, particularly from the 1940s to early 1960s. The study, prepared by the state and underwritten by the Department of Energy, estimated that fewer than 100 people may have developed those ailments.

The facilities include the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the former K-25 uranium enrichment plant, which is now an industrial park.

The lawsuits claim hazardous, toxic and radioactive releases from the plants damaged or threatened the health of residents living in Oak Ridge or downwind or downstream of the plants.

They seek ``a public apology for deliberately irradiating the public and exposing them to deadly radioactive and hazardous materials without their consent.''

In addition, one of the lawsuits claims blacks who relocated to Oak Ridge for work in the 1950s were moved into the Scarboro community, where they were exposed to high levels of pollutants from the Y-12 plant about a mile away. The neighborhood remains predominantly black.

In 1999, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control said it could not substantiate claims of a higher incidence of respiratory problems among Scarboro children because of where they live. The CDC said that 13 percent of 119 Scarboro children surveyed had asthma, compared to a national rate of about 7 percent. The Scarboro rate, however, was about the same as that for children living in Detroit.

Listed as defendants in the lawsuits are: Union Carbide Corp., Monsanto Co., Eastman Kodak Co., Eastman Chemical Co., the University of Chicago, Roane-Anderson Co., Turner Construction Co., Martin-Marietta Energy Systems Inc., Lockheed Martin, Lockheed Martin Energy Systems, Babcock & Wilcox Co., McDermott International Inc. and Bechtel Inc.

Also named are present laboratory manager Battelle Inc. and Y-12 manager BWX Technologies. Company spokesmen did not return calls seeking comment.

-------- us nuc politics

Powell Cautious With Peacekeepers

January 17, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Powell-Hearing.html?pagewanted=all

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Received with all the respect of a folk hero, Colin Powell told the Senate Wednesday at a confirmation hearing that the Bush administration will move full-speed ahead with a nationwide defense against missile attack.

In the process, said Powell, nominated to be secretary of state, a landmark arms control treaty signed with the Soviet Union in 1972 probably will have to be changed to make way for the controversial and futuristic program.

Brushing aside reminders by Sens. Joseph R. Biden, D-Del., and Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., that allies and others are skeptical about the project, the retired four-star general said, ``When people see something new come along they are terrified, but if it is the right thing to do, you do it anyway.''

``In the end of the day, it will benefit the world,'' he said confidently.

Taking a firm stand on another unsettled issue, Powell said the Bush administration would not ask the Senate to ratify a treaty President Clinton signed New Year's Eve to create the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal.

Reflecting concerns in the Pentagon and among congressional Republicans, Clinton had said his successor should not ask the Senate to ratify the treaty until the United States was satisfied its personnel abroad would not taken to court in frivolous or politically motivated prosecutions.

The proposed court, supported by human rights advocates around the world, could be set up if 60 nations ratify the treaty. Powell made clear the United States would not be one of them. He told the senators not to ``stand on their tippy-toes'' waiting for the treaty to be submitted.

Soldiers and other Americans could be faced with prosecution without the protection of their rights under the U.S. Constitution, he said.

Committee members took turns praising Powell, the first black nominated to be secretary of state, some assuring him he would be confirmed unanimously. Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes. D-Md., called the hearing a ``love-fest'' and Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., introduced Powell as ``in many respect a role model for generations of Americans.''

Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., who will chair the committee beginning Jan. 20, said President-elect Bush ``hit a home run. ... I can imagine no better qualified person to serve as the first U.S. secretary of state in the 21st century.''

Powell, who grew up in the gritty Hunts Point section of the south Bronx, went to public high school and college in New York and entered the Army as an ROTC cadet, called his selection to head the State Department ``miraculous'' and said ``it would have been unthinkable'' when he was a young officer.

In the seven years since he retired as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell has amassed a sizable fortune, through lucrative corporate connections and high speaking fees.

In testifying, he pledged the Bush administration would be ready to help ``every country that has a desire to be free'' and that other nations would be judged partly on whether they value human rights.

``It should be part of our dialogue,'' Powell said. ``We should constantly press them on this issue.''

Dismissing any suggestion the Bush administration might pull back from an international role, Powell said, ``There is no inclination whatsoever to have our nation withdraw from the world into a fortress of protectionism or an island of isolation.''

And yet, Powell struck a cautious stance on U.S. peacekeeping operations in the Balkans, saying the vulnerability of troops must be considered when they are deployed, whether for peace operations or potential conflict.

He said the Bush administration would take a close look at U.S. commitments in the region ``with the hope of reducing our troop levels there over time and in consultation with our allies.''

On another key front, North Korea, Powell said the new administration would move ahead but ``without any sense of haste'' to establish normal relations with North Korea. ``We are open to a continued process of engagement with the North, so long as it addresses political, economic and security concerns,'' he said.

Elsewhere, he cautioned Russia not to act in a ``heavy-handed way'' toward neighboring former Soviet republics and said he would try to get a political process started with Sudan even while the African country treats its people ``in such a deplorable way.''

Powell denounced Iraq as ``a failed state with a failed leader'' and said Bush would work with allied leaders to tighten sanctions against President Saddam Hussein's government,

Dismissing arguments that economic pressure hurts Iraqi children, Powell said a nuclear, chemical or biological weapon in Saddam's hands ``threatens the children not only of Iraq but the entire region.''

In another area, Powell called China ``not our enemy'' and said ``our challenge is to keep it that way.'' In the Middle East, he said the Bush administration ``will do our best'' to move the peace process forward.

The nominee stood firm on Bush's plan to construct an extensive defense against missile attack, which Clinton declined to do partly because there was no certainty it would work.

Even if North Korea agreed to freeze its missile program, ``we should continue to move ahead as aggressively as possible,'' Powell said.

And, Powell said, the 1972 treaty with the Soviet Union that banned nationwide missile defenses so that a Russia would be disinclined to launch a nuclear attack on the United States, was ``probably no longer relevant to our new strategic framework.''

---

Powell's Complex Record

January 17, 2001
By JAMES P. RUBIN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/17/opinion/17RUBI.html

LONDON - When Gen. Colin Powell appears today before the Senate, many senators will be inclined to praise his qualifications and life story and move toward speedy confirmation. But first they should ask him some questions about his record of involvement in decisions to use American military power abroad.

General Powell clearly deserves credit for America's victory in the Persian Gulf war. But as secretary of state, his job will not be to conduct a war, but to help decide whether to fight it.

Before the Gulf war began, General Powell was so opposed to fighting it that Dick Cheney, who was secretary of defense, literally had to order him to provide military options to President George Bush. The senators should ask the general now whether, given what we know about Iraq's production of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, he underestimated the danger from Saddam Hussein. Does he still believe, as he did in 1990, that it was wrong to confront Iraq militarily over its invasion of Kuwait?

As the war began, General Powell said of the Iraqi army: "First we're going to cut it off, and then we're going to kill it." Yet, at the end of the ground war, the Bush administration allowed much of Iraq's army to escape - especially the Republican Guard, which has sustained Mr. Hussein in power ever since. The senators should ask General Powell whether he believes now that we should have destroyed as much of that army as possible when we had the chance.

Former President Bush and some of his advisers have said one reason they couldn't unseat Mr. Hussein and didn't fully destroy the Iraqi army was the risk of offending Arab and European countries in the coalition. Today, General Powell and the new Bush team say they intend to strengthen international sanctions on Iraq, even though most of our Arab and European allies want to weaken or eliminate them. That brings up another question: Can we now afford to ignore the strong opposition of these allies and demand, as General Powell has suggested, that they help "re-energize" the sanctions?

Then there are the Balkans. As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and later as a private citizen, General Powell expressed strong objections to American military involvement in Bosnia and Kosovo. He argued that anything short of a massive deployment of ground forces was unlikely to be effective, and that in any case war in the Balkans didn't affect America's national interests.

So it seems fair to ask him now: Didn't NATO's air strikes in 1999 against Yugoslavia cause Slobodan Milosevic to capitulate, allowing NATO peacekeepers to be deployed with little interference? Weren't NATO's air strikes against the Serbs in Bosnia in 1995 an important factor in achieving the Dayton peace accords that finally stopped that terrible conflict?

Clearly, America is better off now that the Balkan wars have ended, Mr. Milosevic is out of power and democratic governments are in place. General Powell should be asked whether the Balkan experience shows that limited uses of military force can indeed achieve important, though limited, objectives - an approach he has rejected in the past.

There is a question, too, about Somalia. There, in 1993, 18 American soldiers - lacking supporting forces and equipment - were lost in an ill- fated mission to capture the warlord Muhammad Farah Aidid. President Clinton has said that General Powell, despite reservations about the chances of success, recommended that Mr. Clinton proceed with that mission. General Powell often discusses his advice to the president, but he has been silent on this point. The senators should ask why he recommended the Aidid mission without the use of overwhelming force, which he has so often considered essential.

General Powell certainly has the diplomatic skill and experience to be a fine secretary of state. Indeed, with the new president's inexperience in foreign affairs, the general is likely to be a towering figure in the administration. That is all the more reason why the Senate should ask him these questions now - not only to shed light on his record, but perhaps to prompt him to re-examine his thinking about the use of force.

James P. Rubin was assistant secretary of state from 1997 to 2000.

-------- MILITARY

-------- drug war

Today's teens avoid a 'Traffic' jam

USA Today
01/17/01- Updated 10:07 AM ET
By Karen S. Peterson
USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/health/2001-01-17-traffic.htm

OK, you are the parent of a teenager. And you know that a movie is just a movie; it's celluloid, not a slice of real life. Nevertheless, you are panicked by the portrayal of alienated A-list teenagers in Traffic, Steven Soderbergh's drug epic with multiple themes that's up for five Golden Globe awards Sunday. How real are those class leaders in private school, those teens with the social pedigree and the top grades who kill time and almost themselves? Not very, some say.

The movie has that dark thread about cynical, bored, angry, coked-out kids - as personified by the daughter of Michael Douglas' character - all wrong, say some prominent trend trackers and teens themselves. Those traits tend to belong to Generation X, the twentysomethings, not today's 16-year-olds, they say.

"We assume that all that stuff from Gen-X land - all the stereotypes of detachment from family life, an attraction to risk-taking activities like drugs and sex, a collective pessimism about the future - is true of the new bunch of teens today, that they are just a linear extension of Generation X," says Neil Howe, co-author of Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation (Vintage, $14). "That is just not happening."

Howe and co-author William Strauss, both historians who have written extensively about generational differences, coined the term "millennials" for those born since 1982. The oldest have just entered college.

"You can always find some kids like those in the movie," Howe says. "But to say Michael Douglas' daughter is some type of representative kid, that is just not indicated."

As Douglas' character prepares to become the nation's new drug czar, he faces a brutal reality. His 16-year-old daughter, a National Merit finalist played by Erika Christensen, is a drug addict. She and her friends, one of whom almost dies from an overdose, generally trash society, themselves, their parents, their future and one another as they do drugs.

Traffic screenwriter Stephen Gaghan says the portrayal is absolutely accurate. Now 35, he says he saw such behavior often as a teen. And those memories are bolstered by "hundreds and hundreds of people" he interviewed while researching the movie for three years. "The addictive nature cuts across every generation," he says. And believing that kids headed to fancy Ivy schools don't do major drugs is "ridiculous."

Parents can easily be confused about the real extent of teen drug use. Statistics are complex and can be conflicting. The Partnership for a Drug-Free America runs its own studies and monitors those of others. The private, non-profit organization says that, overall, adolescent drug use peaked in 1979, declined steadily throughout the 1980s and began to climb again in 1991-92 until 1997. For the past three years, however, there has been a slow, steady decline.

Howe and Strauss cite many hopeful statistics. Over the past five years, the rates of teen homicide, violent crime, abortion and pregnancy have "plummeted at the fastest rates ever recorded," they write.

The authors see many positive teen values:

Teens are team players. "They wear their school uniforms, give service in the community, gravitate to group activities," Howe says. Polls show they see selfishness as the major cause of the nation's problems.

They accept authority. Again, polls say twice as many teens as parents trust the government; nine in 10 teens trust and feel close to their parents. Teens tend to support and agree with the values of their parents, Howe says, "although they may disagree with how well those parents live by their values."

They see themselves as smart. "These new teens think being smart is a hugely positive thing," Howe says. "During the 1990s, aptitude test scores have risen within every racial and ethnic group, especially in elementary schools," Howe and Strauss write.

They believe in the future and see themselves as its cutting edge. This optimism perhaps most sets them apart from Generation X and the teens in Traffic, according to other experts and some teens as well.

"Cynicism is much more true of Gen Xers," says Laura Sessions Stepp, author of Our Last Best Shot: Guiding Our Children Through Early Adolescence (Riverhead, $29.95). "I would say today's teens are realistic, not cynical. They know much more about the world than we did at their age, and that has made them more cautious. I found a resilience among them, a sense of optimism that some might say is out of proportion with reality. They sense they have a place in the world, and they will find it."

They are, she says, concerned about college and then getting jobs, but "they feel they are better prepared by technology to take on the future. The world they have known, without war and with a healthy economy, has been pretty good. They do not see the world as black as we do." The have their eyes open, Stepp says, "but they are looking up at the sky."

Some teens agree. "We get jaded at my school once in a while, but I would not say it is a constant thing," says Shinzong Lee, 17, of Basking Ridge, N.J. "The depiction in the movie is an exaggeration." And, she says, "the top students are not the ones using drugs."

Teens today know what is going on, says Brady Welch, 17, of Mount Pleasant, S.C. "The fact is, you do see 16-year-olds using some drugs. But you don't see a lot of pessimism and cynicism. We are not a pessimistic generation."

Sarah Rosen, 17, goes to a private school in New York. "My friends are motivated, upbeat people. Some do have money and the ability to pay for things like drugs. But the kids I am around are talking about what they will do after college and how they will change the world. We don't think the world is going nowhere and there is nothing we can do about it."

However, not everyone is mellow about teens in 2001. "Kids today are doing cocaine and heroin. We know that," says Patricia Hersch, author of A Tribe Apart: A Journey Into the Heart of American Adolescence (Ballantine, $14). "We know many are depressed and not getting appropriate mental health treatment." She says she deplores today's trend to see teens as either all good or all bad. Instead, they are a collection of "complex, individual lives."

Howard Simon of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America says parents can take two messages from Traffic. "The movie is a wake-up call for those who think good kids don't use drugs," he says. At the same time, "the majority of kids are good kids," he says. And "the majority are not using" illegal substances.

---

USA Today
01/17/01
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Utah Salt Lake City - Mayor Rocky Anderson visited Washington to urge President Clinton to grant clemency to nonviolent drug offenders. The Democratic mayor has criticized the war on drugs and says sentencing guidelines are too strict. He has asked for a pardon for Utah's Cory Stringfellow, who has served 5 1/2 years of a 15-year federal sentence for drug crimes he committed in his teens and early 20s.

-------- iraq

Latest challenge from Iraq

January 17, 2001
James Hackett
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/commentary-2001117234242.htm

Ten years after an allied coalition led by George W. Bush's father devastated his armed forces, Saddam Hussein is making trouble again.

Since the U.S. election, Saddam has been threatening a holy war against Israel. On Dec. 31, Iraq staged the biggest show of military force since the 1991 Gulf war. Saddam stood on the reviewing stand firing a rifle into the air during a four-hour military parade as more than 1,000 Russian-made tanks, artillery, infantry units and new surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles rolled by, with jet fighters and 60 helicopter gunships flying overhead.

This followed last month's parade in Baghdad by nearly 2 million Iraqis eager to fight against Israel, in response to a call by Saddam for volunteers to wage a holy war to "liberate Palestine." On Dec. 31, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said Israel is in a state of strategic alert facing the possibility of war. As terrorists attack Israelis, the fear is that radical Palestinians will roll out their cache of machine guns and mortars to increase the carnage, and have artillery support from the heavily armed Hezballah in southern Lebanon.

Saddam Hussein is using the situation to try to foment a new Arab war against Israel. In a Jan. 6 television address, he announced establishment of a military command for the special forces he created to support a Palestinian revolt. He also announced deployment of the Republican Guard's Hamorabi tank division toward the Jordanian border. With a population that is more than half Palestinian, Jordan would have trouble preventing Iraqi "volunteers" from crossing its soil to fight a war against Israel.

The Iraqi military parade showed off new and improved weapons and equipment. The well-dressed troops wore uniforms and boots imported from Syria, while new Mercedes and Renault trucks reportedly imported under the U.N. oil-for-food program were used to carry troops and tow artillery. The 1,000 tanks on display, with new engines and parts from Ukraine, showed Saddam has been able to modernize his military despite the U.N. sanctions.

New Russian-made SAM-8 and SAM-9 surface-to-air missiles were shown, as were several new models of surface-to-surface missiles. One missile was described by Iraqi television as similar to the banned al-Hussein missiles that "we rained down on the Jews" in the Gulf war, and which Saddam said had all been destroyed. Ominously, a chemical weapons unit marched with the missiles, underscoring that there have been no inspections of Iraq's missile, nuclear and chemical weapons programs since Saddam threw out the U.N. inspectors more than three years ago.

This display of missiles comes just weeks after Khidir Hamza, a top nuclear adviser to Saddam Hussein until his defection in 1994, revealed that Iraq is dangerously close to producing nuclear weapons. In remarks made on Dec. 8, Hamza said Iraq is continuing its nuclear weapons program. Baghdad has solved most of the engineering problems, he said, and only needs a source of enriched uranium to produce nuclear bombs. He complained that "the whole world" is playing down the threat.

It would be reckless to ignore Saddam's calls for a holy war against Israel. After all, he invaded Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990. Now, with the son of his old adversary moving into the White House and Dick Cheney and Colin Powell, who prosecuted the war against him 10 years ago, becoming vice president and secretary of state, Saddam has a greater incentive than ever to cause trouble for the United States.

Two years ago Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act authorizing assistance to groups opposed to Saddam Hussein's regime, but the Clinton administration has given little more than lip service to Saddam's opposition. The Bush administration should move quickly to reverse that policy, and send a message that any new aggression by Saddam will meet the same kind of opposition it did 10 years ago.

Steps should be taken to protect U.S. forces and allies in the Middle East. The new Patriot PAC-3 missile interceptor should be moved from its current low-rate production into full-scale production without delay, so it can be sent to defend U.S. forces and bases in the area. This advanced-capability Patriot also should be offered for sale to U.S. allies, to help them defend themselves against the growing numbers of tactical missiles in both Iraq and Iran.

For example, PAC-3 would be a valuable complement to Israel's Arrow interceptor, providing a better defense of key facilities than the existing Desert Storm-era PAC-2s. Deployment of both the new Patriot and the planned National Missile Defense would reduce the value of ballistic missiles and could help discourage their proliferation.

It is better to send a clear warning that aggression will be stopped than to try to stop it after it occurs. The new administration should make U.S. intentions crystal-clear to Iraq.

-------- space

C.I.A. Chief Is Asked to Stay On and Agrees

January 17, 2001
By JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/17/politics/17TENE.html

WASHINGTON, Jan. 16 - President-elect George W. Bush has asked George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, to stay on in his post for an indefinite period, and Mr. Tenet has agreed, a Bush spokesman said today.

The decision ends, at least temporarily, weeks of uncertainty about how Mr. Bush would handle one of the most sensitive national security posts in his new administration.

But the Bush transition team also signaled that the president-elect was not yet prepared to offer Mr. Tenet a permanent place.

"Director Tenet has been asked to stay on the job for what will amount to an undetermined period of time," said Ari Fleischer, spokesman for the Bush transition team.

How long Mr. Tenet will stay will be "something that the president- elect will decide at a later period," Mr. Fleischer said.

The Central Intelligence Agency issued a brief statement saying, "The director is pleased to have an opportunity to continue to serve."

As C.I.A. director since 1997, Mr. Tenet, who is 48, has gained widespread support within the spy agency for rebuilding morale and fighting for more resources after years of post-cold-war budget cutbacks.

His standing in the agency was further enhanced when it became public in 1998 that he threatened to resign if Mr. Clinton agreed to Israeli requests that Jonathan J. Pollard, now serving a life sentence for spying for Israel, be pardoned.

Mr. Tenet has also worked hard to cultivate good relations with the Republican-controlled Congress, and some of the strongest support for keeping him on has come from leading Republicans on Capitol Hill. Most notably, Representative Porter J. Goss, the Florida Republican who is chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has made it clear that he believes Mr. Tenet should be retained.

"I think it's a very good choice," Mr. Goss said today. "I think he gets high marks as D.C.I. We are in a rebuilding mode, and he represents a large part of the momentum right now."

Other supporters have included Robert M. Gates, the C.I.A. director when Mr. Bush's father was president. Former President George Bush served as C.I.A. director in the Ford administration and came to believe that the job should be kept separate from politics.

Still, Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has said he believes Mr. Bush should choose his own, new C.I.A. director.

During his tenure, Mr. Tenet has increased hiring and recruitment within the directorate of operations, the agency's clandestine espionage arm, and sought to reform its analytical process. He also set up In-Q-Tel, a unique Silicon Valley venture capital firm that is to invest a small amount of federal money in support of technology that could be used by the intelligence community.

While many of the C.I.A.'s successes in the field under Mr. Tenet remain secret, it is clear, for example, that the agency has played a critical role in dealing with one of the most pressing post-cold-war issues, terrorism. Despite the recent bombing of the destroyer Cole in Yemen, the agency's advocates say American intelligence has been able to curb other operations organized and inspired by terrorists associated with the Saudi exile Osama bin Laden.

Yet the intelligence community has also incurred some notable public failures under Mr. Tenet.

India's test of a nuclear bomb in 1998 caught American intelligence by surprise; the 1999 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the air war over Kosovo was another major debacle. Mr. Tenet has also been criticized for his handling of the C.I.A.'s investigation into evidence that former John M. Deutch, a former C.I.A. director, placed classified material on unclassified computers in his home.

Meanwhile, Gen. Colin L. Powell, Mr. Bush's choice to be secretary of state, has selected Richard Armitage, his close friend and a former Pentagon official, to be the deputy secretary, two Republicans close to the Bush transition team said today.

Mr. Armitage was initially a front- runner for deputy at the Defense Department, and resisted entreaties to work for General Powell, fearing it might interfere with their friendship. But the general has prevailed upon Mr. Armitage to join him at the State Department, associates said.

Republican officials said Edward P. Djerejian, a former ambassador to Syria and Israel who was also mentioned for the deputy job at the state department, was said to be under consideration for other senior jobs in the department.

-------- u.n.

Today In History
Associated Press
January 17, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-History.html

Today is Wednesday, Jan. 17, the 17th day of 2001. There are 348 days left in the year.

In 1946, the U.N. Security Council held its first meeting

-------- u.s.

Today In History
Associated Press
January 16, 2001 Filed at 7:03 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-History.html

Today is Wednesday, Jan. 17, the 17th day of 2001. There are 348 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight in History:

On Jan. 17, 1961, in his farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against the rise of ``the military-industrial complex.''

-------- OTHER

-------- environment

Whitman has skills but lacks knowledge

USA Today
01/17/01- Updated 04:32 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/comment/edtwof2.htm

From President-elect Bush's perspective, tapping New Jersey Gov. Christie Whitman to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) makes perfect sense. As a popular, moderate two-term governor of the nation's ninth-largest state, she has an armload of managerial credentials and has grappled with thorny environmental problems.

Those skills will no doubt help her navigate the thicket of issues and political pressures that will confront the agency during the next four years. They also mean that compared to Bush's more controversial picks, including Gale Norton and John Ashcroft, Whitman was not expected to get a tough grilling at her confirmation hearing Wednesday.

But where Whitman is weakest is where the EPA is most desperately in need of reform. Namely, its poor handling of science.

During the past eight years, the quality of science at the EPA has reached something of state of crisis. Rules have been pushed despite opposition from EPA scientists, to the harm of the environment. Scientific evidence undermining existing policies has been ignored. EPA scientists who disagreed with agency policy were targeted for retribution.

This is not a new concern at EPA. At the end of the last Bush administration in 1992, the EPA released a scathing internal report on the sorry state of science within the agency. Among its findings, science too often didn't drive environmental policy, leaving "EPA initiatives on shaky scientific ground" and undermining agency credibility.

By largely ignoring those warnings, the Clinton-era EPA suffered a series of troubling blunders. Among them:

The EPA championed the fuel additive MTBE for its air pollution-fighting abilities, only to later call for its ban because it contaminated water supplies. EPA scientists had been sounding that warning for years.

The EPA issued rules in 1993 promoting the use of treated sewage sludge as a crop fertilizer, downplaying warnings from agency scientists about possible health risks. Then last March, the EPA's inspector general concluded that the agency couldn't assure the public that its sludge policy was "protective of human health."

During the past seven years, the EPA has seen more of its rules struck down in court than other federal regulatory agencies.

If further progress is to be made on the environment, the EPA will have to become an institution trusted for sound, credible science on environmental risks, one that can be trusted to come up with credible solutions.

But even if Whitman chooses to focus on that task, she faces a steep learning curve. When asked recently about the science behind global warming, for example, she confused that issue with the hole in the Earth's ozone layer.

Unless Whitman can fill in that troubling knowledge gap quickly, the EPA will have little chance under the new Bush administration of fixing the serious problems identified by the last one.

---

USA Today
01/17/01
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Alaska Barrow - Village elders say they've never heard of a winter such as this one, when there was no shore ice at this Arctic Ocean community. Normal wind patterns should have blown ocean ice back onto the shoreline, where it would anchor to pressure ridges. Whalers could have problems if shorefast ice does not show up before the spring hunting season. They need the ice to get closer to their prey.

Conneticut Hamden - The Hamden Middle School reopened after extending a holiday break so environmental workers could clean the building, bury contaminated soil and test the area, which was a dumping ground decades ago. State health and environmental experts insist the school poses no health risks. But about 300 people have signed a petition that favors permanently closing the building.

Idaho Boise - A judge could decide this month whether the state is meeting its constitutional obligation to ensure safe learning environments in public schools. Fourth District Judge Deborah Bail has been waiting for a report on heavy metal contamination in northern Idaho schools. It was expected by November but won't be ready until March at the earliest. Bail said she'll probably go ahead with a ruling so the Legislature will have time to respond.

Illinois Urbana - Some Wisconsin weeds resilient to pesticides and costly to farmers are migrating south into Illinois and could cause trouble this planting season. Training events are held to help farmers identify and combat the weeds.

New Jersey Asbury Park - Rain forest advocates are upset at the city's plan to use tropical timber to renovate 700 feet of the boardwalk. The $1 million project revives a controversy over using such timber, which is blamed for Amazon rain forest destruction. The group Rainforest Relief tried to dissuade the city from using the wood, but officials said it would last longer than pine.

Ohio Columbus - A group that tracks animals and plants in Ohio may find itself on the endangered species list. The 89-year-old Ohio Biological Survey may have to make big changes because of budget cuts by Ohio State University. The school's College of Biological Sciences says its tight budget is the reason for the 50% cut, which is being spread over five years.

Oregon Salem - The Oregon Department of Agriculture introduced a bill that would allow wild pigs to be trapped like cougars or coyotes. Officials believe most are offspring of hogs that escaped from a game ranch. The legislation would change the classification of the pigs from livestock to predators, allowing people to trap them.

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FDA issues rules for new biotech foods

USA Today
Jan. 17, 2001
http://usatoday.com/news/health/2001-01-17-biotech.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Biotech companies would be required to consult with the government before selling new genetically engineered foods or ingredients, under industry-backed rules proposed Wednesday by the Food and Drug Administration. Companies now are not required to have the FDA review new biotech crops, although most do so voluntarily. The FDA also issued voluntary guidelines Wednesday for food companies to follow if they label foods as biotech-free or promote biotech ingredients. Companies would be required to notify FDA of new biotech products at least four months before they are to be put on the market.

Scientific descriptions of the new products, such as genetically modified wheat, would be posted on the Internet during the agency's review.

The rules address ''what is of most concern to consumers, that is making our process more open and transparent and making it mandatory,'' said FDA Administrator Jane Henney.

The new rules are in line with a series of proposals that the Clinton administration made this spring to respond to criticism of its regulation of the biotechnology industry. Consumer advocates and environmentalists say federal regulation of the industry is lax and have called for mandatory labeling of all biotech foods.

Under a policy developed during the previous Bush administration, the FDA considers gene-altered crops to be essentially the same as those produced by conventional breeding methods and thus not subject to the same regulatory controls as food additives. A federal judge upheld the policy last fall.

Genetic engineering in agriculture involves splicing a gene from one organism, such as a bacterium, into a plant or animal to confer certain traits, such as drought tolerance or insect resistance in the case of plants.

Genetically engineered varieties of soybeans and corn became popular with farmers in the late 1990s and are found in products throughout supermarkets. Monsanto Co. has created a herbicide-resistant wheat that is expected to come on the market as early as 2003. Biotech varieties of fruit, vegetables, fish and livestock are in various stages of development.

Biotech and food companies, hoping to head off more stringent regulation, had asked for the new review policy and labeling guidelines. The companies say further regulation is unnecessary and are concerned that mandatory labeling of gene-altered products could raise unnecessary public fears about the foods and strangle the industry.

''The increased openness and accountability that will flow from the changes FDA announced today provide renewed grounds for the confidence American consumers have in our food supply and the regulatory system to ensure its safety,'' said Carl Feldbaum, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization.

The industry has been on the defensive in recent months because of nationwide recalls of taco shells that were found to contain a variety of gene-altered corn that hasn't been approved for human consumption.

There are unresolved questions about whether the StarLink corn could cause allergic reactions. It is the only biotech crop not allowed in food. Federal officials say they shouldn't have allowed the corn to be grown without approving its use in food.

-------- police

USA Today
01/17/01
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Colorado Vail - Authorities are waiting for a sunny day to use a new infrared laser radar gun to clock speeding skiers and snowboarders. The radar failed to work over the holiday weekend because of heavy snow; it doesn't work in rain or fog either. There are no exact speeding standards on the slopes because of variables such as terrain and skier ability, but authorities hope to discourage skiers from going too fast on crowded runs.

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Berenson case goes to Peru Superior Court

USA Today
01/17/01- Updated 11:15 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/2001-01-16-berenson.htm

LIMA, Peru (AP) - An American whose treason conviction was overturned by Peru's military court should now face a civilian retrial for collaboration with leftist rebels, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

Lori Berenson, a 31-year-old New York native, was sentenced to life in prison in 1996 by a military court on charges of helping the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement plan a takeover of Peru's Congress.

But after years of pressure from the United States, Peru's top military court overturned her conviction in August, granting her a new trial by a civilian court.

Berenson has denied claims that she was involved in the takeover, which was thwarted.

After nearly five months of investigation and procedural delays, state prosecutor Maria del Pilar Ramirez said Tuesday that she had formally recommended that Berenson be tried as a collaborator, a charge punishable by a minimum of 20 years imprisonment.

Pilar Ramirez said her report would be evaluated by a Superior Court prosecutor who will decide whether to request an open trial.

Berenson's attorney Jose Luis Sandoval said Tuesday that the Superior Court could decide as early as next week whether enough evidence exists to move to trial.

Berenson's mother, Rhoda Berenson, said she is still hopeful the court will decide drop the case.

''I think a careful review is going to clearly indicate that there is no basis to go forward,'' she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from New York. ''We still hope the Superior Court would make that review and come to that decision. We have faith that the truth will eventually win out and Lori will be found innocent.''

Police said the plan to take over Congress was foiled by Berenson's arrest and a raid on a rebel safe house where she admittedly lived for a time in 1995.

Berenson maintains that she never knew her former housemates were members of the rebel group.

She was arrested in November 1995 on a bus with the wife of a top rebel leader. Sandoval said he testified during recent pretrial hearings that Berenson was unaware of the group's rebel activities.

-------- activists

Action Title: Mainstream Majority in Mourning for Democracy
Wear a black armband on January 20th!

Wed, 17 Jan 2001 02:31:38 -0500
January 20th 2001

Location: across U.S.
Phone Contact: 619-286-1132
Sponsor: Donna Orlando and Gregg Ward

Our goal...let the Bush Administration, and all elected representatives, know loud and clear that there are millions of decent, mainstream Americans - even Republicans! - who are shocked and outraged by what happened during this election. We're putting Bush and Congress on notice...millions of Americans feel the Supreme Court's decision undermined the will of the American people; as far as we're concerned, Governor Bush will be an illegitimate President.

No matter where you are - at the mall, at the movies, at a protest rally - wear a black armband. If people ask you why you're wearing a black armband...tell them you're upset about the election, and this is your way of expressing it, tell them "millions of people are doing it."

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Activists Of Every Stripe

By Libby Copeland
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 17, 2001 ; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4059-2001Jan16?language=printer

This, then, is activism: the excitement, the certainty, the feeling of being one tiny atom of righteousness against a monolith of wrong.

The feeling is growing on Jana McKinley, who's 19 and idealistic and new to the art of demonstration. Inauguration Day will be her third protest ever. At her first, back in April -- when she protested in Washington against the World Bank and the IMF -- a stranger lent her a gas mask. At first she was shocked. A gas mask?

Then she was smitten. A gas mask. A real battle.

This Saturday, McKinley will protest the new president, protest the "injustice" that's putting him in office, the "out-of-date" electoral college. She'll be one small figure bobbing among maybe 20,000 demonstrators -- just blocks from Bush supporter James Parmelee, but far, far away in ideology. He'll be there to make sure protesters like McKinley don't drown out the celebrants. While she'll perhaps stand beneath a "Hail to the Thief" banner, his crowd's signs will probably taunt "Sore Loserman." .

If the nation is divided over its new president, over whether to question his legitimacy or celebrate his ascendancy, McKinley and Parmelee are the spokespeople of younger generations. Apathy? Cynicism? Ha! They are the true believers. They're willing -- no, compelled -- to endure derision and cold to rally when they could be safely and warmly indoors, grumbling at the television set like much of America.

At 33, Parmelee is, in a sense, Jana McKinley with more seasoning: an activist well versed in his beliefs, his idealism tempered by experience, helping manage this conservative counter-counter-rally because there are plenty willing to follow but few willing to lead.

McKinley is just at the beginning of her long ride, so green to politics that she didn't realize Ralph Nader was running for president till August. But when she heard about him, her vote was his. She seizes causes: a conference about police brutality, an AIDS walk, a protest against the death penalty. She would have protested even if Al Gore had won. She is the type of person who seems more energized, not less, after an evening of marching in the streets -- as if she feeds off struggle.

"It's not talk anymore," McKinley says.

It's bitter cold out here on Mintwood Place in Adams-Morgan as McKinley, a small young woman in a wool peacoat with no gloves, waits with her fellow leafleteers. A handful of members of the Justice Action Movement -- one of the more radical counter-inauguration groups -- is heading over to 18th Street to gin up support for Saturday. They've got JAM posters, fliers and plastic tubs of wheat paste. They've chanted the lines of the D.C. municipal code that allow them to hang literature on public streets, in case the cops ask. They are prepared.

The holdup is Adam Eidinger, 27, one of the main organizers, who's putting on his three-foot stilts, which will give this crew of twenty-somethings a bit of circus appeal. He's only just learned how to walk in them, and, alas, he's wearing the wrong shoes. When he takes a few steps, he starts to fall, and knocks over a bucket of wheat paste. The sticky liquid pools around one young protester's black handbag.

"That's the crazy thing about this," says McKinley, "it's so grass-roots, it's like -- "

"Oh my God!" says the owner of the black handbag.

Well, very grass-roots.

Embarrassed, Eidinger changes his shoes, puts on the stilts again. This time the shoes fit, and the protesters start their slow-moving trek down the sidewalk, toward their version of progress. McKinley skips ahead of Eidinger, whose head brushes the trees.

Noise From the Right . . . Jim Parmelee loves his trusty bullhorn. He's had it at least 10 years, ever since that rally at the Press Club when "the libs had bullhorns . . . and I thought, much like Scarlett O'Hara, I will never be outshouted again."

It has been dropped, it has almost been stolen, but the thing is still in Parmelee's possession -- a testament to his activist constancy. On the Web site of the nonprofit Northern Virginia Republican Political Action Committee -- a group Parmelee founded nearly three years ago -- there are pictures of him and his bullhorn at Gore's house after the election, when he shouted, "Get out of Cheney's house!"

That was a battle vindicated, and Parmelee doesn't want anyone to forget. He'll hit the streets on Saturday to rally because, well, because his side won.

Parmelee is a personable guy with a hearty laugh who wears a blazer and dress shirt (on a Saturday!) and tasseled loafers. On this morning the political consultant traveled to a local GOP group to drop off newsletters encouraging people to come to the rally. National Patriots' March, they're calling it. It's being organized by Parmelee and Kevin Conner, the 23-year-old founder of a new conservative group, LoudCitizen.

Now he sits in the Alexandria office of Tim Hathaway, who runs his PAC's Web site, talking about a renaissance of conservative citizens spurred into the inaugural rally by what he calls the near theft of the presidential election.

"You have people who haven't been involved before," Parmelee says. "Who've been motivated by the left."

"They're just so offended by the whininess of the left," says Hathaway. "How many times has Jesse Jackson referred to this as Selma? Everything is Selma!"

"Grass roots" is a term of honor for activists. Who is more authentic? More passionate? Is it, say, the Justice Action Movement, which barely has a budget, whose members copy leaflets at work because they can't afford Kinko's?

Or does the grass-roots award go to Parmelee and his fellow conservatives, who've been shunned by the "liberal media," who lack the power of "the unions, the NAACP, the whole infrastructure," as Hathaway says -- whose protesters are just ordinary citizens moved to action by their outrage?

"Our people don't start fights," says Parmelee, who lives in Centreville. "Our people are generally church-going, professional types. . . . These are not people who would resort to violence, whereas the left-wing groups, there's more of that potential, because they have the whole socialist rhetoric."

As Parmelee sees it, the people demonstrating in support of Bush are people who love America. Not the perennial activists always finding something wrong with the country.

Not to say, he cautions, that his side will be homogenous.

"I like to quote Mao," he quips. "Let a thousand flowers bloom."

. . . And From the Left Much of protest is marketing. Before venturing out into the cold, McKinley and the other JAM members meet in Eidinger's apartment to review tactics. Theirs is a grab bag of demands: Abolish the death penalty, free Mumia, stop the "corporatization" of America. (And get rid of "Chavez," says one protester, mistakenly referring to secretary of labor nominee Linda Chavez -- who abandoned her bid hours before this evening meeting -- as a "he.") They've got a poster with a picture of the United States with "Sold" written across it, and another that says "Texas' KKK: Kompassionate Konservative Killer" beside a picture of the new president.

But their strength is in numbers, and not everyone is so radical. So how can they appeal to all the left-of-center masses?

"So we shouldn't be appealing to disgusted Democrats? Or we should?" Eidinger asks.

"I say we hang with the anarchist poster," says his girlfriend, Alexis Baden-Mayer, 26.

McKinley has been straddling this spectrum of leftward protest. She's affiliated with JAM, but also with Voter March, a more moderate group planning to rally. And she's doing another project on her own: raising money to feed and house about 100 Unitarians coming here to protest the death penalty. It has been tough fitting all of this around her work: She's taking a few years off before college, living on her own in Fairfax and doing administrative work for a defense contractor. The job has been the source of some "internal conflict," she says, but for now she must pay the bills. She's a pragmatist, too.

Her Bush dissatisfaction is about everything, she says -- "his policies, his history. I just felt that the only reason he was able to get where he did is because his father was president and he's a rich white male."

"You got that right," says Eidinger, who supplements what he calls a "permanent protest mission" with public relations work for progressive causes.

So it's off to 18th and Columbia on this weekday night, where small crowds of partygoers gawk at the guy on stilts. McKinley wanders into a late-night cafe where she offers leaflets and says, "Protesting Bush as the next president," nimbly sidestepping the men who see her friendly demeanor as an excuse to flirt. In this part of town, McKinley is preaching to the converted. People tell her Absolutely and That's a cause I can get behind, and she moves on, fairly bouncing with enthusiasm. She has the people on her side. The tide is turning in her favor.

Back outside, a guy cruising by in a red SUV honks his horn twice. "Hey!" he shouts through the window. "[Expletive] George W. Bush!"

McKinley smiles and shouts back, "You better be there!"

Success . . . and Disappointment Parmelee has long rallied from a minority position. His conservatism was forged as he read "liberal" foreign policy editorials in The Washington Post. Growing up in Foggy Bottom, he attended a school where he was one of only a few Republicans. At the College of William and Mary, he helped found a conservative newspaper to offset the existing one -- which, he says, was managed by a Marxist.

Now he revels in this hard-fought win. Supporters are coming to march from across the country. His Web site is even getting hits from Saudi Arabia. He mulls over what they should chant when they see the lefties on Saturday.

Perhaps: "It's over. We won. It's time for you to go," he says.

"I think you should just do 'Get over it,' " says Hathaway.

Parmelee knows there will always be new hurdles, cycles of success followed by disappointment. But Inauguration Day will be true victory for him. Onward and upward. The tide is turning in his favor.

"We're here to celebrate that the system worked," Parmelee says. "We're celebrating the triumph of democracy."

"That's so beautiful," Hathaway says, half-joking.

"Isn't it beautiful?" says Parmelee, grinning. "Where's my music?"

----

For the Record

Wednesday, January 17, 2001 ; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4030-2001Jan16?language=printer

From a Live Online discussion yesterday with D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey on washingtonpost.com:

Q: How many groups do you believe will be involved in the protests [at the inauguration]?

Charles H. Ramsey: Approximately one dozen [groups] have been granted permits to stage protests along the parade route and in other locations. We have [at least] doubled the number of officers assigned to this event. . . . I can assure you that there will be a strong police presence both at the inaugural parade and in our neighborhoods throughout the city.

Q: Demonstrators will not be allowed into the parade route if they have signs with thick sticks, puppets, stilts or other props. Since when do First Amendment rights of speech and association need to be checked at the door?

A: Our intent is not to stifle free speech. Our concern is for public safety. We want to make sure that objects brought to the event do not jeopardize the safety and security of either protesters, observers, police officers or parade participants. . . .

I am confident that we will once again prove, as we did during the IMF-World Bank protests, that people can exercise their constitutional right to protest, while at the same time those with opposite points of view can conduct their activities. . . . Our department respects the rights of all individuals to exercise their First Amendment rights. We do not take sides in issues. Our job is to simply maintain the peace.

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End To U.N. Sanctions Sought

January 17, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-Iraq-Protest.html

NEW YORK (AP) -- On one of his final days as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke was invited to a lunch. He can be forgiven for passing it up.

The simple meal of lentils, rice, pita bread and untreated East River water is a symbol of the typical diet forced upon Iraqis by punishing, 10-year-old U.N. sanctions, say peace activists who displayed the lunch to onlookers Tuesday outside the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.

``We believe the economic sanctions are illegal and immoral,'' said Ibrahim Ramey of the Nyack, N.Y.-based Fellowship of Reconciliation. ``We understand the anxiety about weapons of mass destruction ... and we are not supporters of the Baghdad regime. But we do support the right of Iraq's people to live in peace and dignity.''

The lunch and demonstration outside the U.S. mission was one of several protests in recent days designed to draw attention to the plight of Iraq's 23 million people under U.S.-backed sanctions ahead of the 10th anniversary of the start of the Gulf War on Wednesday.

Sixteen people who gathered on the steps of the U.S. mission were arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and blocking a public building, police Det. Frank Bogucki said.

Every day for the past week, the protesters have sent a photograph of an Iraqi citizen and a letter to Holbrooke asking him to consider using his influence to end the sanctions, clear Iraq of depleted uranium used in bullets during the war, and allow the country to rebuild its infrastructure.

Noting that Holbrooke leaves office Saturday, the Rev. Bob Bossie of Chicago said: ``He has a few days to take a moral stand.''

Holbrooke was unavailable for comment, his office said.

The United States says Iraqis are suffering because of the policies of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. American officials say the Iraqi leadership refuses to efficiently buy and distribute food and medicine available through the U.N. oil-for-food program.

But protesters say even if the program were working at its capacity, Iraqis would still suffer.

Trade sanctions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait are being kept in place until the Security Council is satisfied that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction.

The sanctions, among other restrictions, prohibit Iraq from receiving so-called dual-use items that could be used in weapons. They include chlorine and chlorinators for purifying drinking water at plants struck during the Gulf War.

Sanctions opponents and humanitarian workers in Iraq say bad water has created an epidemic of dysentery and infectious diseases, resulting in thousands of child deaths.

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World News Highlights

January 17, 2001
Excite News
Reuters
http://news.excite.com/news/r/010117/14/world-highlights

JAKARTA - Indonesian police fired tear gas at about 3,000 rowdy students outside parliament who were protesting over two financial scandals linked to embattled President Abdurrahman Wahid.

Witnesses said scores of police fired tear gas at the students as they tried to pull down a main gate leading into the parliamentary compound in central Jakarta.

------- Onelist (submissions from subscribers)